Tarot
Tarot is a deck of 78 cards that today serves as a divinatory instrument and tool for symbolic self-knowledge. Its origin, however, was playful: it emerged in 15th-century Italy as a card game called trionfi ("triumphs"), related to modern bridge.
Historical origin
The earliest preserved tarot decks — the Visconti-Sforza, commissioned by Filippo Maria Visconti, Duke of Milan, around 1450 — were gold paintings, handmade for the aristocracy. The esoteric turn came three centuries later in 1781, when French occultist Antoine Court de Gébelin proposed in volume eight of his work Le Monde Primitif that the arcana were remnants of the "Book of Thoth" — a supposed secret knowledge of ancient Egypt. There was no historical evidence for the claim, but it stuck.
Structure of the deck
78 cards, divided into:
- 22 major arcana (numbered 0 to 21): The Fool, The Magician, The High Priestess, etc.
- 56 minor arcana in 4 suits of 14 cards each: wands (fire), cups (water), swords (air), pentacles (earth). Each suit has 10 numeric cards plus four court cards (Page, Knight, Queen, King).
Practical use
In contemporary use, tarot combines three functions: divinatory (symbolic interpretation of a current situation), psychological (archetypal mirror, the approach inaugurated by Carl Jung), and meditative (each arcanum as object of contemplation).